Penguin Classic Biography: Earls Of Creation

Lords Burlington, Pembroke, Leicester, Oxford and Bathhurst, the five earls who are the subject of this delightful book, created some of England's most magnificent houses.Living in a revived Palladian era, these deep-dyed aesthetes flourished at a time when the fashionable but gifted amateur exercised a greater influence than ever in the long history of British art. Almost exact contemporaries, their active careers practically spanned the reigns of the first two Georges. The principal country houses they designed - Chiswick House, Holkham Hall, and others - are almost all still standing and most can be enjoyed by the public today.A distinguished architectural historian and former adviser on historic buildings for the National Trust, James Lees-Milne combines a scholarly appreciation of architecture and period with a keen eye not only for the virtues of his characters but also for their Augustan foibles.